UK Oil and Gas Recruitment: Skilled Staff in Short Supply

The UK oil and gas industry continues to enjoy strong interest from
recent graduates as well as from high school leavers, according to
employers and training bodies involved in the sector. But recent
interviews conducted by Rigzone with key figures involved in UK oil
and gas recruitment also found that challenges remain when it comes to
recruiting more experienced personnel.

"Certainly there seem to be enough graduates and a lot of activity
around apprenticeship schemes which are well oversubscribed," Alix
Thom, skills and employment policy manager at industry body Oil & Gas
UK, told Rigzone.

Thom said that Oil & Gas UK's own industry technician training scheme
– which is managed by training body OPITO and the Engineering
Construction Industry Training Board – is very popular with school
leavers. "I haven't got the figures for this year because the closing
date isn't until the end of this month [April 2012], but last year I
know we had 2,500 applicants for 120 positions so certainly we are
able to attract a lot of people to the apprenticeship scheme," said
Thom, who added that the scheme is completed by more than 90 percent
of those who begin in.

So how about graduate-level entrants to the oil and gas industry?

"From our members we are not hearing that they are having problems
attracting graduates. Again, their graduate schemes are
oversubscribed," said Thom. "However, that doesn't mean we can afford
to be complacent and the industry still agrees that it is very
important to continue to encourage schoolchildren to take STEM
[Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] subjects, and to
help society as a whole understand the importance of the sector and
all the opportunities that are available."

Energize Your Future
Indeed, the oil industry training organization OPITO is keen to ensure
that future generations of workers are aware of the opportunities in
the sector in the UK.

"We're running a raft of initiatives that are absolutely geared to
attracting the future oil and gas workforce," Opito UK Managing
Director Larraine Boorman told Rigzone. "We've set up a new careers
Web site called myoilandgascareer.com. We've also set up a schools
ambassador project called 'It's Your Future'. We're running careers
and lifestyles events called 'Energize Your Future' and we've got an
online interactive competition called 'PetroChallenge'."

The 'Energise Your Future' campaign involves a series of one-day
events in which senior school pupils from a particular region get to
learn about the oil and gas industry and careers within the sector. A
recent event, in Newcastle in the northeast of England, saw more than
500 pupils and 20 oil and gas companies take part.

As the UK's leading oil and gas firm, BP is playing its part in
ensuring young people are aware of the opportunities available to them
in the energy sector.

At the moment, BP is seeing very strong interest from university
leavers for its graduate scheme, with more than 7,000 applications
submitted this year for just 250 UK roles.

"Due to the high volume and standard of these applications, we were
able to fill these positions with some of the brightest and best
students we have ever seen," Emma Judge, BP's head of UK Graduate
Resourcing, told Rigzone.

However, part of BP's success in attracting the brightest graduates is
down to it taking an active part in courting student interest during
their undergraduate years.

"There are often preconceptions that STEM subjects have lost their
appeal amongst university students and that, as a result, the energy
industry in the UK is suffering from a shortage of graduates with the
right mix of skills," said Judge. "However, there is a clear drop off
over the three or four years of a university course in the number of
students that actually want to work with their degree. This is down to
a variety of factors, not least of which is that after three or four
years of studying, students who may initially have had a passion for
their subject simply begin to look for new and different challenges.

"We believe it is critical that employers play a role in maintaining
students' initial levels of interest in their subjects. To this end,
BP is offering over 130 UK students paid internships with BP where we
showcase the exciting and rewarding career opportunities that we can
offer graduates."

Ultimate Field Trip
In the UK, a major center for the global financial services sector,
the attractions of a well-paid career in banking or asset management
can be a strong draw for graduates with strong numerical skills, such
as engineers, who might have ended up in more practical careers in the
energy sector or in industry.

"It is true that BP faces competition from other companies for the
best STEM talent, and this is not just limited to other engineering or
energy companies, but increasingly from banks, law firms and
accountancy firms who also value the special attributes that these
candidates have," added Judge.

"Not only do these students have an excellent technical understanding
of their subjects, but the way their minds have been trained is also
very beneficial to any business they go into – they are logical and
analytical and that is a tremendous asset to any employer. If you
stripped out the demand from consultants and banks there would be
enough STEM talent to go round. Therefore, the challenge for the
energy industry is to convince students that we offer a more
compelling career choice than working for these other professions."

Among initiatives run by BP that are designed to attract the best
graduate talent is the "Ultimate Field Trip" – a competition in which
students are presented with a real-world business challenge and asked
to come up with a practical solution.

"This year we asked students to come up with a design for a zero
carbon dioxide oil refinery," said Judge. "And we will be sending the
winners on six-week paid internships to the Gulf of Mexico and
Trinidad and Tobago, where they will experience first-hand what a
career with BP can offer. The initiative has seen a strong response
from students, with more than 1500 registrations over the past three
years."

Last October, BP also released $2.5 million (GBP 1.6 million) in
scholarship funding to UK students, on top of $9.4 million (GBP 5.8
million) that it made available in 2007. From this fund, the firm
expects to support up to 450 students on STEM courses over the next
few years.

So for now, it appears that the UK oil and gas industry is having no
problems recruiting for entry-level positions. But when it comes to
finding more experienced talent there are issues.

"We do have some significant shortages and there are skills gaps that
are very much an issue for the industry and we are hearing that very
strongly from our members," according to Oil & Gas UK's Thom. "There
are skills gaps in engineering as there are amongst technicians, but
they are at the experienced level: 10-plus years' experience."

Indeed, at the start of April Rigzone reported UK-Norwegian oil junior
Bridge Energy's experience that "in pretty much any professional
discipline in the oil industry, whether you are in London, Aberdeen,
Oslo or Stavanger, the market… is very tight and there's a lot of
competition for 10-15 years-qualified geophysicists, geologists,
reservoir engineers, production engineers, pretty much any discipline
you can name."

Transition Training
Opito's Boorman backs this up. "A recent Opito survey recorded that 66
percent of our contractors and 62 percent of our operators were
experiencing problems recruiting suitable employees in a range of
occupations," she said. "The biggest skill shortage is senior-level
engineers in subject areas like project management, control,
mechanical, subsea, geologists, geoscientists, reservoir analysis. So
… all really senior, experienced roles."

At the technician level, there are shortages of machinists, tool
dressers, electricians, instrumentation technicians, welders, and
liquid and gas flow metering staff.

"Those types of occupations are seeing real skills shortages and firms
are having problems recruiting for those jobs," added Boorman.

One solution has been what Boorman calls "transition training," where
experienced technical staff are recruited from other sectors and
re-trained for the oil and gas industry.

One example is to target former military personnel.

"The military is ideal," Boorman told Rigzone. "And, we've just done a
project here in the North East – a transition training program for
recently-redundant [Ministry of Defence] staff and all of them have
been placed with oil companies."

Boorman continued: "That's working very well, but we've only touched
the surface. We've done a small pilot project that's worked very well
and we're keen to scale that."